Mirage in the Dust
by DasCheesenborgir
Summary: Memories resurface at an unexpected time.


**I'm actually not really sure where this was going by the end, but I still figured it might be worth sharing. If only so that I don't feel as though I completely wasted my time on it… especially cuz I really should've been working on schoolwork at the time lol**

 **Yeah idk, it was really free-form and in-the-moment, the kinda thing where I spent a few minutes trying to polish it up and it just felt a little pointless. Take it as you will then, I guess?**

 **0-0-0**

Twenty flesh-bone-walkers laid in dismantled heaps, strewn out amongst the pillars of smoke and burning hide-structures.

At least five of them hadn't even been armed. Seven of the twenty, unarmed inclusive, had been disproportionately shorter than the rest, and subsequently suffered forty percent less direct hits from blast cannon volleys than the remaining thirteen- and yet, the sixty percent of bolts that did hit had had a hundred percent success rate in disabling the targets during the three-minute engagement that transpired earlier.

The organic alloys that plated the flesh-bone-walkers' calcium-enriched frames were malleable and frail. Subtly twitching and recoiling in response to even mild stimuli such as the blowing dust whipping forth from their collapsing homes, trembling unsteadiness only compounding their already pitiful accuracy with the handful of scrap-blasters they had. All it took was handful of bolts to thoroughly dismantle them- a single one to the head-structure to disable them.

With his and 235's blast cannons, they had averaged a single trigger pull to terminate each target during their engagement with the flesh-bone-walkers. Twenty volleys fired, twenty flesh-bone-walkers eliminated.

The optical sensors embedded in his helm highlighted twelve pairs of footprints in the sand, all directed on a common vector thirty five degrees to the East amongst the thirty two pairs of tracks criss-crossing the ground.

235 had deduced the same correlation- only pausing to make a… curious gesture, towards him, before they both ran off in pursuit of the twelve surviving flesh-bone-walkers.

 **0-0-0**

The fleshwalkers shrieked in terror at their approach, pelted their plastoid hulls with jagged rocks. None of them were armed this time. There were only twelve, rags billowing from their frames in the winds that whipped over the plateau they stood on.

The combat threat they posed was negligible. The flat terrain and their already close proximity would make a successful retreat impossible.

Still, they fought and cried, as he and 235 rained volleys of bolts onto them.

The short ones were the first to fall this time, having pulled ahead of the taller ones- presumably since their malconstructed arms made throwing their rocks more difficult over distance.

The frail little constructions peeled apart, one at a time, one termination per pull of the trigger. They fell in droves, had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. They wouldn't even last a minute at this rate.

Scraps of molten flesh-alloy flew up into the wind, cauterized strips of skin. Little orange streaks billowing into the clear sky.

He'd seen something like it before. But never during battle.

 **0-0-0**

It'd hardly been a battle at all. The last target made no physical effort to resist them- frail, patchy-clothed man kneeling in the dirt and ash, perfectly still. Life signs indicated he was still fully operational- it seemed a… curious gesture, to make.

He followed 235's lead, marching towards the target-man at a steady pace. They were both well within effective weapons range. Either one of them could've terminated the target-man already.

But neither of them did.

They continued walking, boot treads crunching on the ashen carcasses of the men, women, and children they'd downed on the way. Embers flared up into the faceplate of his helm with each successive step.

Little dots of orange floating in the air, dangling in the clear sky.

…men, women, and children would've greeted them like that before. Throwing handfuls of the glittering dots towards them, glittering streaks- unarmed, frail. But they hadn't been targets then. There had been more of them- more of the men, women and children. Their cries had had a different pitch to them. They did not run, they did not hide, they did not attack them.

There'd been more of the plastoid-shelled figures as well- just like him and 235, marching along, backs straight, stepping in perfect synchronization.

There were only two of them now. And their armor was a deep grey, a _dark_ grey. He remembered it used to be white. White, so easily dirtied by the battlefields they fought on, black scorch marks worn on the surface like… badges of honor, even. It was ridiculous, but it was how they'd learned to tell the veterans from the rookies.

There'd been an Army of them before. A _Grand_ Army.

Synthetic alloys tightened beneath his gloves- his hands. His hands tightened their grip on his blast cannon. A strange tingling traced itself along the flesh above his knees, along the borders of where they synapsed with metal legs. Quivering. Wobbling.

He drew in a breath, but there were no lungs under his chestplate to receive the filtered air. Only a mechanical rasp blew out of his helmet.

He came to a halt by 235's side, before the man that knelt before them. Serene, still, eyes closed, a stoicness creased over the ridges of the man's face, an uncanny calmness amongst the scalding fires of battle. Kneeling, in a curious, familiar posture, wreathed in robes rather than armor.

He heard 235 call out, the same one word that had been welling in his throat- butchered, reconstructed, synthesized by mechanical filters. It sounded nothing like the 235 he used to know.

 _"General?"_

The man's eyes opened. A steely grey. His cheeks were sunken, dust caking the skin, wretched boils clinging to his neck.

And tears, spilling from widened irises. The General had never cried, never even mourned. 235, himself, their brethren- they were all just clones, after all.

Cracked lips trembled, a feeble whisper slipping out.

"What?"

The man's whole body began to shudder, the obscuring cloak cast over his figure unable to conceal the pitiful frailty of it anymore. The mirage of familiarity swirling around him seemed to evaporate like the ashes peeling off his dead comrades.

This man was nothing.

…the General was nothing. The General was dead, because he had been a target. Because the _Empire_ decreed it. The Grand Army was dead, because the Empire decreed it. The Republic was dead- and their loyalties did not lie with it anymore.

…

This man was a _target_ \- and as it was evident that 235 was unable to terminate the flesh-bone-walker, it fell to him to finish their mission.

The flesh-bone-walker drew in ragged breaths, coughing out the grit and dust it sucked in through its sobs.

"You've taken everything from me already. Just kill me and be done with it."

He was quick to oblige. This time, one hundred percent of the ensuing blast cannon volley found its mark.


End file.
